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Welcome to the award-winning Oregon Encyclopedia

WHA logo Western History Association, Gene Autry Public History Award, 2012.

AASLH American Association of State and Local History, Leadership in History Award, 2011.

NCTE logo National Council of Teachers of English, Multicultural Program Award, 2009.

The OE History Nights

A collaboration of The Oregon Encyclopedia, McMenamins Pubs, the Des Chutes Historical Museum, and the Northwest Examiner. All events are free and open to minors (with adult).

Edgefield (Troutdale): Tuesday, May 28, 2013, 6:30. "Cataclysms on the Columbia, the Great Missoula Floods." Presented by Scott Burns.

Old St. Francis School (Bend): Tuesday, May 28, 2013, 7pm. "Volcanic History of Newberry Crater." Presented by David Stowe and Kyla Grasso.

Mission Theater (Portland): Monday, June 3, 2013, 7 pm. "Portland Xanadu, the Rise and Fall of the Hoyt Hotel." Presented by Dan Haneckow.

Missoula flood

hoyt


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    Bridge of the Gods, by Jim O'Connor

    In the heart of the Columbia River Gorge, a 1,858-foot-long steel-truss bridge spans the Columbia River at Cascade Locks, about forty miles east of Portland. The Bridge of the Gods, first built in 1926, derives its name from a much larger Bridge of the Gods that covered a part of the Columbia River in about 1450 AD. The earlier “bridge” was a blockage caused by the Bonneville Landslide, which headed on the southern escarpment of the 3,417-foot-high Table Mountain on the Washington side of the river and cascaded downward, filling the Columbia River valley with more than five square miles of debris up to 400 feet thick. READ MORE

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